This Remote Only Rewinds, No Pause, No Play
by insanityxspeaks
Summary: The rest of the ashes were made into exfoliating soap. I am Joe’s cheek-splitting grin. Book-verse.


**A/N: This was written for a project in Lit. I had to write a concluding chapter to Fight Club and I tried to pull from Palahniuk's style. Some feedback would be much appreciated.**

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This Remote Only Rewinds, No Pause, No Play.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Heaven is all relative. To me, Heaven is an in-between place, a bridge between the past and the future. Heaven is the present, and also the least important. Past is a boring word, history is a bit more interesting. And the future is the unknown. Something must come after heaven. Heaven is just a ticking clock. The thing about the unknown is that it's unknown.

To Tyler, Heaven is Hell. He prays for Hell, oh the irony. He wants to meet God, he wants God to spit in his face and tell him what a disgusting, rotten maggot, worm of a person he is. He wants to meet God, so God can say, Tyler Durden, you legend, look what you've done. Sick.

All of Tyler's history has led to this moment. The meeting with God, where God will already know his name, he won't have to consult his list or a nearby angel, he will know Tyler Durden. He will have watched the explosions of red and orange and yellow, blossoming over the Earth like wildflowers, the destruction, and know that it was the work of Tyler Durden. He will see Big Bob and the space monkey's recycled homework assignments float on up to Heaven and know that it was the work of Tyler Durden.

God never meets up with Tyler Durden.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Even in Heaven, Tyler Durden is thirsty for misery. He sits on clouds and slams his own fist into his face, smiles at me with blood lacing the spaces between his teeth like a rotten spider web, stares right through me with gaping holes for eyes and chunks of flesh missing from his cheeks.

I am Joe's aching conscience.

Even in Heaven, I can't sleep. The pillows are extra soft, the sheets are clean, and Tyler hates it. He misses his dilapidated house, his space monkeys. They can't do this without him.

I am Joe's egotistical tendencies.

Heaven has this neat little room with mattress-clad walls where Tyler and I spin and spin and sometimes I fall asleep with Marla's voice in my head, her breath in my ear, filling me like smoke. I miss you, she says. I like you, she says. I miss the support groups, she says. I love you, she thinks, but I can hear that too. In Heaven, I can do that.

But then Marla turns into a space monkey, a nameless, faceless space monkey that doesn't need a name anyways, just a number or an order. Burn this, Tyler says. Kill this person, Tyler says. Happiness is a warm gun.

Tyler talks about Satan a lot. He says that he pictures Satan as this raw-skinned, red goat-man with clawed hands and sunglasses because that's how he's always portrayed on those video games Tyler used to play, the ones with the guns and blood and car chases. The ones that gave him so much inspiration. The space monkeys don't know that Tyler's clever graffiti and vandalizing and explosions were mostly stolen from T For Teen video games. The lye kiss, however, he takes full credit for.

I talk about Marla a lot. I wonder if she still steals clothes from the Laundromat and sells them to thrift stores. I wonder if she still wears old Bridesmaids dresses, ones with stains that once belonged to complete strangers. I wonder if it still gives her some kind of thrill.

Tyler and I are waiting for the next episode. Episode is the vague word that we use because we don't what the episode will be, there's no preview, just unknown. Reincarnation? Eh, could be. A vacation to Hell? Eh, wishful thinking on Tyler's part. Or maybe Tyler will pull a Jesus and come back to life. The space monkeys dug a neat little hole in the back yard and stuck a slab a stone on a pitchfork through the ground, with a makeshift epitaph that reads, Tyler Durden, May Your Legend Live. But they didn't bury the body. The stripped us of fat, shaved off our hair, and then cremated what was left. A few ashes are sprinkled at the local park, in a little pond beneath a brick wall that says, in technicolor spray-paint, Big Brother Is Watching You, and Tyler's face.

The rest of the ashes were made into exfoliating soap.

I am Joe's cheek-splitting grin.

A few space monkeys fled after Tyler died. Those space monkeys were tracked, slaughtered, cremated, and made into soap too. But there were still more new recruits than there were deserters. They endured the same process, denial, starvation, acceptance.

A new leader was instated. He never claimed to be the new Tyler Durden, because that would have been a deadly self-declaration, I am homework assignment, kill me, please. No, he was more like a substitute teacher, as if he too believed that Tyler would pull a Jesus and magically walk through the front door, with a fresh black eye, and say something cliché like, miss me? And no one would even blink an eye.

Funny how Tyler Durden is compared to Jesus. Buddha. Abraham. God himself. But never Satan. Destruction spawns salvation. Chaos elicits enlightenment. All this delicious, caustic mayhem, it will be your savior.

Tyler Durden never met God. Tyler Durden never met Satan. I never told Marla I loved her. I never told Big Bob to turn around, no, you don't want a hand-kiss, you don't want fight club, go back to your testicular cancer support group and do not look back, you hear me. Do not look back.

I am Joe's all-consuming regret.

The clock ticks, somewhere. Time for another day in Heaven. More Marla dreams. Some of the angels look like Marla. Some of the angels look like Tyler.

The unknown awaits, and Tyler Durden is so anxious. Another world, perhaps, that he can bring to its knees. Another universe, even, to film its end.

I am Joe's nervous butterflies.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.


End file.
